How Stalin Rebranded the USSR

Hey boys and girls, who wants to talk about communism? As much as it’s a meme to say “no one’s ever tried real communism”, the USSR under Stalin... was the world's largest company town?

Music (in order of appearance):
J.S. Bach - Ricercar a 3 BWV 1079
Wheatman - Garage Rock
Kevin Macleod - Hidden Past
Suno - Red Mist
Dmitri Shostakovich - The Gadfly Suite, Overture
Moments - Runaway Quartet
Orchestralis - Sneaky Bassoon
Orchestralis - Soviet Red Army Military March
Febri Ultra - USSR National Anthem but it's lofi
Shostakovich - Jazz Suite No. 1 III. Foxtrot
Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra - Lezginka
Blacksmith - Russian Folk Ensemble
Alexander Alexandrov - The Sacred War
Shostakovich - The Gadfly Suite, Op. 97a II. Contredanse

[tisFrancesfault]

"Lenin was too worried about Trotsky becoming a second Napoleon, and failed to see Stalin becoming the original Stalin"

[TheGameDomeGuy]

oh trotsky being the voice of reason ooof man it sure would be awkward if Trotsky had agreed with all of Stalin's actions but added "but i would've done it better" in his memoirs

[domco_i]

I like how Lenin has an Irish accent. He learned English from an Irishman. It's a nice little detail.

[benm]

I love that you gave Lenin the Irish accent that his Irish born english teacher gave him.

[ethandavies]

The inclusion of Lenin's Irish accent (which borders towards Scottish) is the cherry on the State owned cake.

[AnimarchyHistory]

It always blows my mind how Stalin was so unprepared for war with Germany given he'd been collaborating with them in practically every sector of the economy AND military for TWENTY YEARS.

[noriyakigumble]

I love how you kept in mind that Lenin famously spoke English with a thick Irish accent

[Darkgeran]

Finally the second famous mustache man

[reesehendricksen]

Fun fact, one of the only things Stalin agreed on with Trotsky was the gulag. That was Trotsky’s big idea.

[perfectlyfine]

A lot of corrections:
1) the soviet government wasn't funded by bank robberies, it was the RSDRP back when it was an underground party. Mensheviks were in this party and also benefitted from what little money could be used.
2) why Mensheviks and not SRs mentioned? Mensheviks were miniscule in October 1917 compared to either Bolsheviks or SRs.
3) Moscow? Excuse me? It was Petrograd where the October Revolution took place.
4) I feel this white washes Trotsky for a simpler narrative, primarily for comedy. Just to clarify, Trotsky was... Complicated.
5) Lenin died in 1924, not 1922, wtf, this is Googlable.
6) Stalin didn't, in fact, design the first five uear plan to catch up to the west while they were down with the Great Depression. This is anarchronistic, 1928 is when the first five year olan started. Again, tells a better story, but doesn't tell the actual story.
6) By "27 million on the Russian side akone", I think you mean "on the Soviet side alone". Millions of those people were Jews, Ukranians and Belarusians, and hundreds of thousands of others, come on!

Overall, I actually did like the video. But, come on, look over at your scripts! At least to the point you get Lenin's death date correct!

[shrekisthebest]

Lenin died in 1924, not 1922. That makes a big difference.

[danieljliverslxxxix]

Slight correction. The Bolsheviks didn't win the parliamentary election. The social democratic party, the SRP (party of socialist revolutionaries) won with over 17 million votes, while the Bolsheviks only managed over 10 million. Lenin and his party respected the will of the people by storming the assembly, declaring it void, and setting him and his cohorts up as the leading party.

[CrownedAnarchy]

One big thing left out of this was the actual rebrand, not just the reconstitution. Stalin rebranded the USSR internationally as more moderate and liberal with the Stalin Constitution of 1936, which was on paper much more closely aligned with the West than the original constitution. This is a huge part of why the West was able to pivot away from their anti-communist stance during WW2. Stalin was seen as a moderate voice who had wrangled power away from the extremists of Lenin and Trotsky

[taan]

This video is full of inaccuracies.
1.Bolseviks didnt get elected into parlament, they got elected into a "constituent assembly" - a gathering that wouls determine how the new Russian republic would be governed, but not an actual legislative body, that would be Duma
2.They didnt "have to share power with menchiviks", neither they nor Menchiviks had a majority or even plurality, another socialist party, "Sovialist Revlolutionary Party" had the majority.
3.It did not happen on Moskow, but jn Petrograd, which was the capital of the Russian state at the time.

[Nic_Bloody]

Fun fact, Trotsky is not quiet the Communist purist as he’s portrayed. He, not Stalin, was the one who instituted the Officer corp, and re-established discipline in the Army. He was more in favour of War Communism then NEP (New Economic Policy), despite you know, the 600, 000-2 million deaths it caused. Furthermore the Grain Requisitions he was also heavily in favour for, as it supplied the army with much needed rations. So comparing him to Napoleon, with whole betrayal of the ideas of Revolution, for a stronger revolution is pretty spot on, he was also a key General, pretty good at his job so that also works. He was also in favour of the Red Terror, which is where Stalin got his ideas for the Great Terror. Think of it like, Lenins is Coke Classic, Stalins is Raspberry Coke (because it’s tasteless and detestable) and Trotsky is Coke Zero, supposedly better for you, until you do a quick google on what aspartame does to you.

[HistoryWorld]

Ahhhh Finally a video dedicated to Cursed Russian Mario

[nicbahtin]

im surprised you skipped over the great purge the main reason the USSR sucked in the war
Like the purge removed three of five marshals, 13 of 15 army commanders, eight of nine admirals 50 of 57 army corps commanders, 154 out of 186 division commanders, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars. I'm surprised any officers were left

[lakotacamp]

Your animation have improved so much. Used to just listen to your stuff while multitasking because the writing was already funny, the added little body acting of your characters helps it a lot and I find myself stopping what im doing to watch it.

[jonathanwebster]

slight nitpick:

Communism (in its final state) doesn't agitate for the abolition of the state per se, that there's *no* government, just that things become so collectivised that the state becomes irrelevant.

Or as Engels put it: "the state is not 'abolished', it withers away".

That's in contrast to anarchism, where the aim *is* the total absence of a government and state.

[ericcolbear]

Okay, overall, I agree with the thesis of this video. The Soviet Union was more or less, just a giant company town....That being said, there were some really big and small errors made in this video that do need to be addressed.

-1. By 1919, The mensheviks were basically irrelevant in politics, as I think they only got like 10% of the vote in that Assembly. It was actually the social revolutionaries who had won the majority vote in that election, which put the Bolsheviks in a minority government. And instead of giving up power, they closed the The assembly, said that the vote was rigged, and then formed the all Bolshevik Assembly.

-2. While the Bolsheviks did take over multiple buildings, this wasn't in 1919. This was actually during the October Revolution of 1917. When the vote for the 1919 assembly was happening, the Bolsheviks were kind of the de facto rulers, but they wanted an election to legitimize their power. However, when they lost the election, coming in second out of all the parties, then they just closed the assembly. So they already were in control of everything.

-3. As much as I like. George Orwell, George Orwell did us a great disservice by painting Trotsky as the voice of reason. He wasn't. He agreed with everything that Stalin did, just tried to frame it that it would have had better results if he was the one who was in charge doing it. Even the 5-year plan was trotsky's plan, which I think was trying to be hinted at in the video, but I think the joke would have been better if Stalin's PowerPoint had "By Leon Trotsky" But then trotsky's names was crossed out and in red had Stalin's name in there.

-4. The banning and de-powering of labor unions in the Soviet Union, actually happened during the Russian civil War, while Lenin was still alive. This was done under the guise of "War Communism", or the idea that you can't have anybody arguing against the state, while the state fights to preserve itself. I hate Stalin, but Lenin was the one to ban labor unions.

-5. Trotsky and Stalin weren't the only potential successors to Lenin. in fact, if I remember correctly, neither of them were even the first choice. The reason why Stalin came to power once Lenin died, had to do with his position as general secretary. He was in charge of all communications amongst the Bolsheviks, and use that power to create a coalition behind him, while alienating his opponents through misinformation, missing information, And other tomfoolery. Such as Lenin's last will and testament mysteriously disappearing, but you could trust Stalin, Stalin knew what Lenin wanted ;)

-6: part of the reason Trotsky never got into power, was because everyone saw Trotsky as an outsider. Trotsky was a menshevik before he joined Bolsheviks. Trotsky even had entire speeches on how Lenin was dangerous to Russian democracy and communism before he eventually saw where the tides were going, and change sides. People saw him as an opportunist, And a Weasley one at that. And as much as people didn't like Stalin, Stalin had at least been there from the beginning.

Again, on the Grand strokes of the video, the thesis is correct. The Soviet Union was not communist, it was just state capitalism, But there were In my opinion, too many simplifications that lead to a misunderstanding of the times and the events.